Nature of the Beast is an expandable card game that focuses on recruiting animals and strategic control of your 3x3 playing field. The first player to fill their entire field with animals wins.

Players recruit animals, promote leaders, purchase equipment, find locations, enlist legendary animals, and befriend human allies. Players also keep track of two tallies during the game: Favor and Fury. Favor indicates how much 'pull' you have with humanity. Fury indicates how much of a threat humanity sees you as. Fury is gained by attacking your opponents. Gaining Fury can allow you to take advantage of sinister 'Dark Nature' cards, but gaining too much can eliminate you from the game.

Each Battle Box features two 70-card faction decks: City vs. Suburb, Farm vs. Forest, or Polar vs. Prairie. Each player needs their own deck. Decks may be customized by swapping cards from other faction decks.